A Mother’s Summer Camp Prayer

Lord, as You know, I sent my firstborn off to his first week of honest-to-goodness sleep-away summer camp this morning, and You can rest assured I hugged him like I was sending him off to college. Parenting seems to be such an exercise in throwing my baby birds out of the nest over and over again from greater and greater heights.

Each time I pray that if they cannot soar, they can at least manage a landing without crashing and burning and without being too afraid to try again.

Today’s toss from the nest and onto the grounds of summer camp is no different, and we’re both going to need Your help to get through this week.

Specifically, if it’s not too much to ask, I pray the following:

As an initial, catch-all request, please, Lord, keep my kid from making any and all decisions – stupid, injurious, or both – that will result in a call to Yours Truly to come and haul his envelope-pushing little self home earlier than planned.

Lord, please keep my kiddo free from encounters with Lyme disease-carrying ticks, poisonous spiders and snakes, rabid raccoons, bears, bullies, Bigfoot, and every other dangerous creature running through my irrational mom brain right now.

PUH-LEASE, Lord, I beg of you, do not let me find that brand new bar of soap unopened and unused in his bag upon his return. Ditto for the toothpaste.

Along those lines, between my kid and his laundry, please let the laundry be the dirtier of the two at the close of camp. And please relieve me of this anxiety I’m feeling over any potential miscalculation in the number of clean socks and underwear that made their way into that duffel bag.

Lord, please inspire my child to eat a vegetable this week.

Please help my child have the good sense to use that sunscreen and bug spray in the side pocket of his duffel bag so that he does not spend his week feeling like an itchy lobster. I think 100-degree days and 80-degree nights spent in a tent will be plenty of character-building discomfort without piling on burns and bites.

Lord, please do not let any of that expensive tactical gear inadvertently wind up in another camper’s bag at the end of the week. You know what I’m talking about – the full set of towels that can fit in your pocket, the flashlight with 12,000 functions, the solar battery charger, and everything else my husband came home from the store with when he was sent solely to procure the sunscreen and bug spray that probably won’t get used without Your divine intervention. Please do not let my husband’s tedious efforts at sewing, stenciling, and Sharpie-ing our last name on everything to have been in vain.

Lord, I pray for the mysterious malfunction of that high-tech flashlight when my son is tempted to read under the cover of his sleeping bag at midnight, but also for its miraculous reliability when he needs to find the bathhouse at 2 a.m.

And Lord, please use Your divine might to pull that soundly sleeping tween from his sleeping bag at 6:00 in the morning because goodness knows I’m not going to be there to thrust open the blackout curtains and threaten him with the loss of all that he holds dear if he isn’t “up and dressed in the next five minutes!”

Lord, please spare him the embarrassment of a wet sleeping bag this week. Please.

Lord, please let my postcard reach him before he leaves camp, even though I didn’t mail it last week because I was so focused on the packing list that I didn’t see the camp instructions about sending mail a week in advance. And Lord, if You’re feeling particularly generous, maybe put it into his little head to write me back, even though, “Ugh! Writing is the worst!” and we won’t find it in the mailbox until long after he has returned home again anyway.

Lord, please don’t let the entirety of that camp store spending money get converted into sugar and stomachaches.

Please keep him from feeling too lonely or homesick this week. Help him to remember to be kind and to be himself. Help him make friends and return home to us a stronger, more confident, and even more independent version of his brave self.

And Lord? Thank you for summer camp.

Amen.